The recently released Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report on Youth Entrepreneurship shows that youth entrepreneurship is alive and well in Canada. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is the largest study of entrepreneurship in the world.

Highlights from the report include:

Canadian Youth see entrepreneurship as good career choice and associate it with high status. Over 60% of Canadian youth saw entrepreneurship as a good career choice, and having high status, and three quarters saw it as having high status. Most also saw it portrayed positively in the media.

They feel confident that they have the skills and experience needed to start a business. More than half felt they had the skills and experience need to start a business, although around 40% expressed a fear of failure. However this is about 10% less than expressed by the 18-64 age group. However, we found in other GEM reports than the experts are quite skeptical of these views.

They want greater independence. There has been a pronounced shift in the last 4 years to increase the fraction of youth entrepreneurs who seek greater independence, rather than to increase income. More than twice as many of the youth entrepreneurs we interviewed valued independence more than increased income.

They are highly educated. Over 60% of youth entrepreneurs have a post-secondary degree, while among the youngest youth entrepreneurs (ages 18-24) 16% have post graduate experience. This compares with 54% of the 18-64 age group in Canada who have a post-secondary qualification.

Consumer services form the largest share of youth entrepreneur’s ventures. It is typical of most reports on entrepreneurship that consumer services are the largest single business category. There are low barriers to entry and frequently a relatively low need for capital to get started. 45% of youth entrepreneurs’ ventures are for consumer services, 32% for business services and 20% for manufacturing.

Personal savings is the primary source of funding. 58% of youth entrepreneurs funded their ventures with personal savings, 19% by bank loans and 9% from family. The median value of the investment to start their business was $268,214.

There is a gender gap, as female youth exhibit less confidence and a higher fear of failure than their male counterparts.

The overall entrepreneurship rate for youth is slightly lower than the Canadian population. In 2016 14.1 % of youth were involved in entrepreneurial activity, compared with 16.7% of the total 18-64 population. This is perhaps not surprising as generally people need to accumulate money and experience before starting a business.

An increasing number of Youth are running established businesses. In GEM, an established business is one that has been around for 3.5 years. The number of these headed by Youth has risen quite rapidly in the last four years.

Ontario and Alberta are hubs of youth entrepreneurship. The rate of youth entrepreneurship varies quite a bit across Canada. Highest rates are found in Ontario, Alberta and Quebec, while lower rates are found in Newfoundland, New Brunswick and PEI.

The full report is available at www.gemcanada.org – look under 2017 (when the data was collected).

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is reputed to have said that there were “three kinds of lies – lies, damn lies and statistics” as a sort of tongue in cheek way of advising caution when interpreting numbers. A case in point is entrepreneurship statistics.

Entrepreneurship is fallingThere have been a series of reports in Canada (and around the industrialized world) deploring the decline of entrepreneurship. A recent one from the Fraser Institute compares the rate of entrepreneurship in a number of countries in the periods 2001-2007 and 2008-2014. For Canada the decline was 8.5%, for the US 18.6%, for Britain 7.5% and or Australia 20.3%. A long article in Forbes Magazine has the title ”Why US Entrepreneurship is dying.” It quotes reports from the National Bureau of Economic Research showing that start up activity has been slowing down in the US for three decades. A recent article in Aspire Canada has the title “ Is Canadian Entrepreneurship Vanishing?”

Various explanations for this decline have been put forward. The Forbes article places the blame on large student loans, making potential entrepreneurs more risk averse. A recent article in the Globe and Mail believes that demographics is to blame – the aging of the population and decline of the number of potential entrepreneurs in the prime age group of late 20’s to early 40’s. Another explanation is the lack of equity funding compared with the US.

Entrepreneurship is rising

On the other hand, data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor – the world’s largest study of entrepreneurship, tells a different story. In Canada, for example, the rate of entrepreneurship (measured as the TEA Index of total early stage entrepreneurship activity) has increased from an average of 8.6 (for 2002-2006) to 15.1 (for 2013-2017), almost doubling. In the US the numbers have gone from 11.2 (average of 2002-2006) to 12.9 (average of 2013-2017). That’s not such a big increase as Canada, but it’s definitely not a decline. Australia shows a similar increase from 11.9 (average for 2003-2006) to 13.2 (average for 2014-2017).

What’s going on?The first thing to note is that the two groups are looking at different sources for their data. The “falling” group looks at company registrations, where a new company has been formed. The “rising” group look at actual activities, what percentages of the adult population are actually involved in entrepreneurial activity, whether the activity is part of a registered company or not.

But what could be behind this? A very likely explanation is the gig economy. A report by Randstat Canada (the largest staffing company in Canada) says that 30% of the Canadian workforce is already in “non-traditional” jobs, including part time work, temporary work, contract work, and freelance work, self-employed or unpaid work. This number has increased significantly in recent years, and is expected to rise to 45% by 2020 according to Intuit Canada. A report from Ryerson University found that over 50% of all new Canadian jobs involve “non-standard” work arrangements. Very similar numbers are predicted for the US.

One of the problems with dealing with this issue is the lack of an accepted terminology. Many almost similar terms are used, including gig economy, sharing economy, digital platform economy, and others. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has resorted by defining non-traditional work arrangements by what it is NOT – “It is not full time, dependable employment with a contract of indefinite duration.”

There is a theoretical underpinning to this change. Ronald Coase won the Nobel Prize in economics by explaining that firms exist to minimize transaction costs. It was cheaper for General Motors (for example) to assemble all the materials to make a car than to contract with others to do the same thing. That was then. Now the computer revolution has made it much easier and cheaper for firms to do work by contracting with freelancers, and outsourcing significant parts of their activities. Also, it is easier for people to find work using apps such as Uber, Airbnb, Handy and TaskRabbit that trying to find full time employment. And perhaps they value the flexibility as well.

ConclusionIt looks very likely that we will see further increase in entrepreneurial activity in Canada. It remains to be seen how much of this is done through registered companies and how much of it is done on a freelance or sole proprietorship basis.

Most of you know that Dr. Cooper Langford passed away on March 11th, 2018. His Celebration of Life will be at the Best Western Village Park Inn, 1806 Crowchild Trail, Calgary, T2M 3Y7, on April 30th from 2:00-5:00.

We dedicate this blog to him, a review of his huge contribution to THECIS over the years by looking at some of the projects he contributed to.

Cooper was co-founder of THECIS in 2001, and was a Board member and active Fellow right up to the end. He made many contributions to THECIS. This is just a brief summary of some of his project involvement.

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)2013- February 2018

Since 2013 Cooper authored numerous GEM reports, including the Canada 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 reports. At the time of his passing he was working on the GEM Canada 2017 report. He also wrote the GEM Alberta reports for 2013-2016. His work on these reports set the standard for the other GEM reports that were written in Canada since 2013. Cooper also attended the GEM Annual meeting in Monterey, Mexico in 2014.

InnoWest 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010

InnoWest is the western Canadian Innovation Conference. THECIS has organised this event since 2004, and it has become an annual event, with steadily increasing attendance from across western Canada and beyond. Cooper was a mainstay at organizing these events.

This event is organised to provide business information to 50- 70 graduate students in science, engineering ICT, health and agriculture. It takes place at a weekend on October in Banff. Support has come from iCORE, Alberta Ingenuity, AHFMR, the Alberta Agricultural Research Institute, NSERC Prairies and the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Cooper attended all the workshops and led many of the sessions.

Ingenuity 601 [Graduate Innovation Course], 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010

This project, carried out for Alberta Ingenuity, was to develop and deliver a learning experience to graduate students in Alberta to acquaint them with the basics of business concepts and give them experience working on a business related project in a multidisciplinary environment. Cooper led many of these sessions.

Health Research Translation Project, 2009
This course is modelled on Ingenuity 601 but targeted at graduate students in medical, health and biosciences and related fields such as medicine, nursing, rehabilitation, life sciences and biomedical engineering. Cooper designed and delivered the courses, and Anne Tyrie facilitated the sessions.

Second Banff Innovation Summit, 2008.

The theme of the second Banff Innovation Summit was “The resource industries as engines of economic diversification”. The Summit took place in September, with about 30 senior individuals from industry, government and university from the four western provinces. The Summit was supported by Western Economic Diversification, the Alberta government, iCORE and NSERC Prairies. Cooper actively participated in the planning and execution of this Summit.

Pathways Project, 2008

Industry Canada asked us to review the various pathways that knowledge travels from university to business in Canada, and provide examples of each type of pathway identified. Cooper led the project team and wrote the final report.

International Comparison Review, 2008.

This project developed an analysis of the policies being pursued in different countries to encourage industry-university collaboration; assessed the various strengths and weaknesses of various national approached; provided a critical assessment of the organizational structures of universities that underpin university-industry collaboration; and identified best practices and principles. This was for Industry Canada. The project team consisted of Cooper and Richard Hawkins.

ICT Sector Performance in Alberta, 2007/8

This project, supported by Alberta Advanced Education and Technology, is a follow on from the Alberta Innovation Scorecard project. It aims to answer two questions: How is the ICT sector performing in Alberta? How is the government doing supporting the sector? Cooper organized the workshop, along with Jeremy Hall.

Foresight Scoping Workshop, 2007

This was a foresight exercise to identify applications that may emerge from the convergence of nano-technology, biotechnology and ICT. It is initiated by the Office of the National Science Advisor and supported by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Biotechnology Secretariat and CMC Microsystems. Cooper was a mainstay of the project team, along with Richard Hawkins, Peter Josty, Ted Heidrick, and Jeremy Hall.

University Business Collaboration, 2007

This project is a critical review of the literature on how university researchers collaborate with industrial firms, and how those relationships can result in commercial products. Supported by Industry Canada. Cooper wrote this report.

First Banff Innovation Summit 2006

The goal of turning Western Canada into a dynamic, diversified and internationally competitive knowledge-based economy must be supported with policies and strategies that take account of both leading-edge ideas and local knowledge about how to assess and improve innovation performance.

The Banff Innovation Summit brought together 30-40 carefully selected industry, policy and academic stakeholders in economic diversification and innovation will interact with an elite international group of experts who are producing leading-edge ideas and knowledge concerning innovation policy and strategy. A speaker from the OECD in Paris provides the keynote address. The Summit was funded by a number of organizations, including the Governments of Canada, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and BC, and the University of Calgary. Cooper actively participated in the planning and execution of this Summit.

University Research Park Vision and Conceptual Masterplan, 2005.

THECIS worked with a consortium of firms of architects to develop a Vision and Conceptual master plan for the rejuvenation of the University Research Park. This was done for Calgary Technologies, the University of Calgary and Alberta Infrastructure. Cooper was a mainstay of this project.

Health Innovation 2005, 2006, 2007

This project was funded by a private Calgary based Foundation. It was a year long study of the health industry in Alberta, to identify the main characteristics of the industry and celebrate its successes. The results of this work were disseminated across Alberta by a series of workshops in major centres organised by THECIS. Cooper was Principal Investigator on this project.

Innovation System data Initiative 2005/6

Policy makers often need better and more timely information than is currently available from Statistics Canada. This project – supported by Alberta Innovation and Science, Western Economic Diversification and NRC-IRAP – addressed this need by sending a graduate student to Ottawa and supervising him to obtain information of value to the project sponsors. Cooper supervised the student who went to Ottawa for this project.

Return to Community – the Impact of the University of Calgary on its Community. 2004

The University of Calgary asked THECIS to prepare a report showing the impact the University has on the community. This report was subsequently used in discussions at the university Senate and by other bodies.

His presence will be missed for a long time to come at the THECIS office, on our board and future projects.

Women’s entrepreneurship in Canada

Women’s entrepreneurship continues to attract a great deal of attention and interest around the globe, given growing evidence of its economic and social impact. Initiatives such as the World Bank’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Financing Initiative (WE-FI), and Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women Program , are just two examples of a growing range of initiatives aimed at supporting and encouraging women-led business. Within this global context, Canada has emerged as a leader in women’s entrepreneurship, with the highest levels of early-stage activity (TEA), and the fifth highest established business ownership (EBO), amongst innovation-based economies.

The GEM Canada Report on Women’s Entrepreneurship highlights the strength of women’s entrepreneurship in Canada. Some highlights from the report:

In 2016, 13.3% of Canadian women engaged in some form of early stage business activity, involving a business that was 3.5 years old or younger. This was up from 10.0% in 2014, and marked the highest rate of women’s TEA in 2016 amongst comparable innovation-based countries.

Comparing Canada to other G7 countries—such as the U.K. (5.6%), Germany (3.1%), France (3.4%), and Italy (3.3%)—helps to underline the striking and high level of Canadian women’s participation in early-stage business.

6% of Canadian women were engaged in established businesses – those more than 3.5 years old – the fifth highest rate among comparable countries.

Canadian women entrepreneurs are found across all age groups, though start-up rates are highest among women aged 25-44, while the majority of established business owners fall between 55-64 years of age.

Women entrepreneurs are highly educated, with 12% having a graduate degree and 53.8% having a college or university degree.

82% of women indicated they were motivated to start a new business by opportunities, up notably from 70% in 2014, while only 14.5 % were motivated by necessity.

Early stage women entrepreneurs are heavily involved in consumer services (54.4%), followed by business services (28.2%) and manufacturing (14.6%)

For established businesses, the pattern is different and much more evenly distributed between consumer services (41.2%) and business services (41.2%). This greater presence in business services is important and encouraging, given that business services is typically a much more profitable sector, one that is increasingly recognized as driving innovation and business growth according to research on the ‘knowledge-intensive business service’ sector (KIBS). 19.2%)

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is the world’s largest study of entrepreneurship, and typically covers 60-70 countries each year with a standardized methodology allowing ‘apples to apples’ comparison between countries. In Canada GEM reports are carried out by the Centre for Innovation Studies (THECIS) based in Calgary. This report was written by Karen Hughes a Professor at the Alberta School of Business and the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. The full report is available at https://tinyurl.com/y94gxqpn

Let’s stop talking about innovation and start talking about what really matters

Following some 30 years of investigating “innovation” as a social and economic phenomenon, it is time for me to admit that I am getting fed up with this term. In the conversation about public policy for science, technology, industry, higher education or what have you, I fear that it is now so far adrift in a sea of mythology that has lost all touch with reality. Its usefulness began to be sabotaged long ago by waves of boffins, hucksters, on-the-make journalists, and political opportunists (aided and abetted by not a few like-minded academics), all of whom bought hook, line and sinker into a narrowly tech-centered vision of how economies work. But the term now obscures more than it illuminates. It is high time for us to reset the conversation. Because the existing one is taking us nowhere in terms of meeting the urgent new challenges Canada faces in sustaining prosperity in an increasingly uncertain world.

A good example of why we need to wipe the slate is the Innovation Supercluster Initiative (ISI) announced in the 2016 Federal Budget and now getting underway. “Innovation” appears 51 times in the terms of reference for this program. Except as part of the name of the sponsoring Ministry, it is hardly ever used once to refer to the same thing. So in a scant thirty pages we read about innovation, innovating, innovation superclusters, innovation eco-systems, innovation players, business-led innovation, innovation hotbeds, private-sector-led innovation, innovation partners, broader innovation ecosystems, gaps in the innovation eco-system, access to innovation, collaborations of innovation ecosystem players, dynamics of innovation ecosystems, innovation advantage, local innovation ecosystems, innovation assets, innovation spurs, innovation points of contact, innovation cluster regions, platform technology innovation, innovation funding environment … the list well exceeds my attention span. And when “innovation” is then linked up with science, R&D, IPR, skills and training, universities and so forth – well, calculating the national accounts in Roman numerals is easier than trying to make sense of this chaotic conceptual soup.

And here is the rub. The goal of the ISI is not really “innovation” at all. The goal is to stimulate sustainable growth and employment. The assumption is that this will follow from investments in something called innovation. But this is an extraordinarily simplistic view of how innovation might contribute to this outcome. To be sure, innovation affects jobs and growth. But the nature and extent of this contribution is notoriously difficult to isolate, map and measure. Doing so is reliant almost entirely on inferential proxies of mostly indirect and non-exclusive relationships. In less than careful hands they lead easily to completely wrong-headed conclusions.

But jobs and growth stem also from a host of other factors that are far easier to define, and that can be mapped, monitored and measured using far more robust and reliable economic and social indicators: factors like company formation, networking, human capital formation, technology adoption, spillovers, diversification and trade composition, to name but a few. Moreover, many of these factors are explicitly or implicitly contained in the ISI terms of reference already. So why focus a program on something you can’t even define, let alone assess, rather than on something you can?

Confronting this question is important because, in many respects, the ISI represents significant progress over the dreary parade of cookie-cutter programs that have over-populated the ‘innovation system’ real estate for so long, and to such minimal effect. The key difference is that the ISI is not just another set of tech-centered research subsidies, although it is not clear that the government fully realizes the implications of this difference. Rather, in the prosaic disguise of “clusters” (another slippery concept) – lurks what in most of our competitor jurisdictions would be immediately recognizable as industrial policy.

This is something we have seen practically none of in Canada since the heady days of Trudeau Père. For some reason the concept has become taboo – curious as we used to be rather good at it. But as I hear howls of protest swelling up, let me be clear that I am not referring here to PetroCan, or the Bricklin. I refer instead to the marshalling and coordination of public and private resources with the objective of stimulating the creation of new industries that are built specifically around the introduction of some significant new economic factor – like a new technology, process, practice or resource – that has the potential to transform how an economy creates wealth. This is not some radical new notion. Virtually no significant new wave of technology or industry has ever taken hold except through very close interaction between the public and private sectors. Get this wrong and you get the Great Newfoundland Cucumber Disaster. Get it right, and you sometimes get Silicon Valleys.

The positive thing about the ISI is that it is not just about inventing new stuff. Rather, it contains several specific mechanisms to build up key business infrastructures and networks, for example between public and private sector institutions, and between large and small companies. Unlike most existing policy measures, it appears to be focused on building industries rather than just supporting companies: essential if productive and competitive new domestic industries are to be sustained over the longer run.

OK, now for the downside. Such strategies only work if actively supported and financed in significant measure on very protracted time scales. Still no indication of much Canadian skin in that game. A budget of $950 million over five years divided up among five or more consortia is hardly going to incubate sustainable superclusters “at scale” as the bumf insists. This whole amount is roughly what a single company at the bottom end of the global R&D super-league would spend on that activity in any given year (Bombardier is currently Canada’s only placeholder in that league). It costs more than that to put a single new automobile model into production. What we have in the ISI is a small-scale demonstration project; a worthwhile experiment, not an economic strategy.

So how does this fit into my argument that we should kick “innovation” out of the policy discourse? Well, first recall that the main concern of governments is not science or technology, but growth and jobs. That is what gets them elected or defeated. The miscues set in when these outcomes become too directly associated with the production and exploitation of science and technology. For the simple reasons that these are among the most difficult factors to predict or control, and that many other more predictable and controllable factors also play into growth and jobs. It is worrisome that in his public statements about the ISI the Minister continues to see the technological elements of the program as the economic drivers, rather than the institutional, networking and business dimensions, which are far more critical for success.

And success is imperative. Currently, Canadian growth is leading the OECD region, and employment trends are positive. But these figures are not being driven by the emergence of dynamic new globally competitive domestic industries. They are driven by consumption, fueled by staggering amounts of consumer debt, and still underpinned largely by resource exports at very low levels of value added. So, the crucial issue for policy is not really creating growth and jobs as such, but sustaining them over the longer term.

Now consider how “innovation” became linked to this problem in the first place. It was introduced originally as a way of explaining economic development: how changes in the ways economic activities are conducted can yield new types and sources of economic value, over and above what would be produced with existing means. That in a nutshell is what our old friend Prof Schumpeter was on about with “creative destruction”. And this basic idea is still the only robust and empirically verifiable conceptual linkage between innovation and the economy. But all it predicts is the existence of a tractable process whereby new sources of wealth can be created through the introduction of new economic factors, and/or their combination with other factors, whether new or existing.

One would be hard pressed to explain growth unless one introduced some dynamic mechanism of this kind. Without it, all that happens is that existing wealth gets redistributed – until eventually the sources of that wealth are degraded or depleted. The problem is that this core observation eventually became associated almost exclusively with the invention and implementation of new technology.

Make no mistake, technical change is an enormously powerful phenomenon. The problems for economic policy start when the focus becomes technology itself, rather than what happens when some new factor combination is introduced. For growth and jobs to be created, it is never sufficient just to invent new stuff, or, for that matter, even to put it on the market. New technologies are commercialized every day and the dirty little secret is that few of them ever amount to anything. Individually, they create little if any wealth and sustain no employment. It is the cumulative long run dynamics of technical change at a whole economy level that does that.

So rather than focusing on producing more technology, or any other new factor, we should focus instead on how sustained economic value can be created both from transforming existing factor combinations, and from adding new ones. And to do this we must look more seriously at this mysterious phenomenon called entrepreneurship. Whether centered at an individual or organizational level, this refers to the very human-centered activity of fomenting change in the social, cultural, economic and even psychological environments in which life is lived, wants and needs are expressed, and the dynamics of supply and demand are played out.

Without entrepreneurship, no discovery will find expression in practice and no technology will have a chance to gain traction in the market. Indeed, it is typically entrepreneurship, and the new opportunities that it illuminates, that drives discovery, ingenuity and invention in the first place, not the other way around. And in the commercial arena, this depends not on the technology, or on any other factor, but on the business acumen of entrepreneurial firms, and on the milieu of institutions and rules in which they operate.

So really the task for governments in transforming their economies such that jobs and growth are not held hostage to declining industries is rather straightforward. First ensure that opportunities emerge for entrepreneurs to establish new kinds of economic activity in as many ways and in as many domains as possible. And then ensure that a fair number of them succeed – for example through many of the potentially industry-building measures contained in embryo in the ISI. But for the most part it simply involves ensuring that the rules governments make on many interconnected fronts allow for the kinds of new combinations discussed above to emerge, take root and prosper. And often this means getting out of the way, or not unduly favoring incumbent or legacy enterprises over new ones.

You can call this “innovation” if you want to, but you don’t have to. And there are huge downsides. First it is redundant. If the above scenario plays out, then, by definition, you have “innovated”. Job done – an innovation is an outcome, not an input. Second, it encourages governments to continue putting the cart before the horse: to divert attention from producing measurable results in terms of increased welfare, and to reinforce the myopic perception that this happens merely by producing more science and commercializing the result. And third, it lets governments off the hook. If the economy fails to grow and jobs decline in quantity or quality, blame can be cast on the lack of some nebulous ‘culture’ of innovation, rather than on the host of real factors that are much more likely to be directly related to that outcome and that fall much more directly within the competence and responsibility of governments to address.

If we fail to put these elements into perspective, promising experiments like the ISI have little chance of having much impact. Their objectives will become mired once again in actions aimed at achieving some abstract and intractable state of “innovation”, rather than on a concrete, tractable state of prosperity. In short, it is time to stop concerning ourselves with what governments are doing to promote innovation, and focus instead on what they really want to achieve and whether they achieve it. We should start imagining ways of designing policy that is predicated on definable welfare outcomes and on rigorous analysis of all the factors that might lead to it and how, including advances in knowledge and technology.

A ’cluster’ or ‘supercluster’ is never a prerequisite for creating new industry. It is something that you end up with once new industry begins to flourish and starts to create new value-chains, new supply networks and new pools of human capital. Let’s focus our efforts on making sure this can happen. Innovation will follow along soon enough.

Another way to develop innovation policy?

At a meeting I was at recently, Gandeephan Ganeshalingam, the Chief Innovation Officer for GE Canada, described their view of the business environment using the acronym “VUCA”. This stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. This is clearly a very challenging environment in which to operate.

Now think about how innovation policy has traditionally been developed. Often there is a commission (such as the Jenkins Report, that studied Federal support for research and development) that studies an issue, and issues a report with recommendation. This is often followed by extensive period of consultation with various stakeholders. Then a policy is announced, sometimes legislation is proposed, and then the policy is implemented. This process often takes many months if not years.

So how likely is it that an innovation policy will work for a company in a VUCA world? Good question!

There is another way to develop innovation policy. In recent years a movement has started (particularly in the UK) to use an experimental approach based on small randomized controlled trials. The approach is straightforward:

Set up pilots to experiment with new programs. One randomly selected group gets the new program, another randomly selected group doesn’t.

Evaluate them using rigorous methods.

Scale up those that work, stop those that don’t work.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been used in a number of policy areas such as development (by the World Bank), education and social policy. They are the gold standard for evaluating new drugs and medical procedures. In all of these areas the link between an intervention and desired outcomes is uncertain because no adequate theory exists. RCT’s provide empirical evidence whether an intervention actually works or not, and provide a strong evidence base for a new policy. As one of the reports says, it replaces reliance on ‘eminence, charisma, and personal experience’ with evidence of what actually works.

RCTs haven’t been used much for developing innovation or entrepreneurship policy, but there is a large potential for exploring its use in those fields.

RCTs, like all new tools, have their strengths and limitations, and require expertise to be used effectively. They won’t be used across the board, just in a few selected areas. A key strength is that they can provide empirical evidence for a new policy, and minimize influences of ideology or history. One weakness is that they don’t explain why an intervention works, only if it does or not.

It is interesting to note that when randomized controlled trials were introduced in medicine, they were strongly opposed by some clinicians, many of whom believed that their personal expert judgement was sufficient to decide whether a particular treatment was effective or not. However randomized controlled trials are now regarded as the gold standard for medical evaluations.

Governments at all levels in Canada spend a great deal of money supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. Randomized controlled trials can be another tool in the tool kit to make sure that we get the best possible outcomes. There is very significant expertise in the medical community to draw on to assist this endeavor.

Entrepreneurship is alive and well in Alberta, according to the latest GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) report, just issued by THECIS. Over 17% of the adult population is engaged in early stage entrepreneurship, a higher rate than in the US, Australia and all other advanced countries. Women are very active in early stage entrepreneurship, at 80% of the men’s rate, also higher than the US.

Consumer services is the most popular field, with just more than 50% of ventures, followed by business oriented services at 30% and manufacturing at 20%. Age is an important determinant of entrepreneurial activity, with higher rates in the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups. Overall, however, about half of new ventures are led by people aged 18-34, and half by those aged 35-64. Above age 65 the rate drops off, but still 4% of older Albertans are active as entrepreneurs.

Education is also a key determinant of entrepreneurship. As people acquire more education they become more entrepreneurial. The highest rate of entrepreneurship is found among those with post graduate education.

The Alberta population is very supportive of entrepreneurship, with 60%–70% of respondents believe that entrepreneurship is a good career choice that successful entrepreneurs have high social status, and that media provide favorable coverage of entrepreneurship.

About 15% of startups are highly innovative, having no direct competitors. About 40% of startups are in sectors with many competitors.

Experts were asked to evaluate the Alberta ecosystem by rating nine relevant factors. The five with the best scores were: physical infrastructure, commercial infrastructure, social and cultural norms, government programs, and government policy at neutral. The lower five in decreasing order were post-secondary education at neutral, R&D transfer (to small and growing firms), internal market dynamics, finance, and primary and secondary education. The experts were also asked to rate to biggest constraints and fostering factors. The most mentioned constraints were finance as the top priority with capacity for entrepreneurship and government policy as next areas of priority.

The most mentioned fostering factors were cultural and social norms as highest priority with the economic climate and, surprisingly, the low rated question of education and training as second and third areas of priority.

The report had five recommendations:

Creative government programs are needed to support entrepreneurship that has promise to create new directions. This needs to involve all departments of governments, not only those with responsibility for small business.

School systems need to examine the opportunities to promote entrepreneurial thinking in the context of education aimed at encouraging independence and creativity.

Despite the evidence that entrepreneurship by women in Alberta is stronger than in other parts of the country or in other developed countries, a gap remains and attitude and motivation data indicate that women still have less confidence in skills and knowledge and women entrepreneurs have more complex motivations. Information programs and mentorship for women remain a priority.

With the low rate of seniors’ entrepreneurship and the expected increase in size of this demographic in better health in the future, consider targeting entrepreneurship programs at older Albertans.

Data show rates of entrepreneurship rise with increase of educational experience. Education for entrepreneurial thinking should be promoted across all types of secondary and post-secondary programs.

In 1967, 20 million Canadians embraced and participated in their 100th Anniversary enthusiastically. The stirring strains of Bobby Gimby’s “C-A-N-A-D-A” or Woody Guthrie’s rendition of the Canadian version of “This Land is your Land”, euphoria generated by the new Canadian flag, and the global reception of Expo ’67 in Montreal, all contributed to the pride felt for our country and its place in the world.

Much has changed in 50 years. Now a nation of almost 35 million, multi national and cultural people. with a Constitution repatriated in 1982. Global trade supports a relatively vibrant economy. Financial discipline saved us from the worst impact of the market melt-down. Canadians are seen as “nice people” with a high quality of life.

However, there is much that we could do to make this country a great one globally. In our efforts to advance across many fronts we seem to have inadvertently slipped backwards. If we are to become “One Canada Again “we need to ensure our path towards Canada 200 is positive. We must pay immediate attention to key areas that affect our ability to go forward together.

Trade, Education, Health, the Economy, Canadian Citizenship and Identity, a Renewed Constitution, and a Return to Political Civility all need to be addressed.

Our nation is a world leader in establishing global trade arrangements. Yet we cannot trade / sell a bottle of beer across many provincial boundaries. Every Canadian should be able to sell or buy goods and services anywhere in Canada.

Canadian students should be free to attend college or university across the country. Admission should be based on ability not geography. A national effort t is required to equalize tuition and residence fees across the country.

We take pride in our “universal health care system”. But, increasing inter-provincial restrictions make it difficult for Canadians to obtain health services wherever they are in the country. Further, different funding mechanisms in provinces, place many Canadians at a fiscal disadvantage. Establishing one “Canada Heath Card” entitling all to free access to medical services across the country is urgently required.

Inter-provincial economic competition is extremely dangerous. Initiatives taken to attract businesses, through tax breaks and other incentives, are undertaken haphazardly across the country by municipal, provincial and Federal national governments. The time has come to collaborate on the development and execution of a comprehensive, consensual national economic strategy.

We should relish the diversity of national origins, cultures and religions. Honouring the traditions and cultures of our First Nations should also be front of mind. The language and cultural of our two founding nations should be enshrined in any renewed Constitution However, to build a “One Canada “philosophy, we need to assert we are all “Canadians First” This will allow us to develop an integrated national perspective to the benefit of all Canadians.

Some may suggest this is a too idealistic vision of what Canada can be. To achieve this we must consider seriously the development of a totally different National Constitution. What was appropriate in 1867, does not fit the 21st century Canada. Although the 1982 Constitution repatriation did modernize Federal and Provincial responsibilities, it also reinforced the provincial powers that have contributed to disparity. We must be prepared to question whether the current structure of Canadian federalism fits our future. needs.

To achieve this ambitious goal, one additional major change must occur. Political actors must commit to return political civility to our democratic institutions. Having almost destroyed any concepts of integrity, truth, shared consultation and mutual respect in the political processes across the country, and fostered deep public cynicism towards politicians and the institutions in which they work, they must work vigorously to reverse this situation. Politicians used to cooperate to resolve issues affecting Canadians. Now such help is usually associated with political contributions and influence.

Moving into the future our political leaders must be able to set mew direction and have Canadians follow with confidence. A good start would be to enact legislation banning any form of negative advertising in elections at all levels across the country.

Many countries around the world are struggling to redefine their national and global purpose. However, Canada is poised to provide a glowing example of how we should move forward into the middle of the 21st Century and travel the road to Canada 200. But, we must do it together as “One Canada – Again!”

GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) is the largest study of entrepreneurship in the world. THECIS manages the GEM project in Canada. The latest GEM report for Canada has just been issued. It is available at http://thecis.ca/index.php/gem-2016/ It shows that there is a very strong entrepreneurship culture in Canada, and the rate of early stage entrepreneurship (TEA -Total Early stage Activity) is the highest in the developed world. GEM data is widely used as evidence for evidence based policy by such groups as the UN, OECD, World Bank and World Economic Forum.

Some of the highlights from the report are:

Almost 60% of the adult population see good opportunities to start a business in the next six months;

Over 50% also have confidence in their skills and knowledge to start a business;

No more than 44% are inhibited by fear of failure.

7% of the adult population is involved in early stage entrepreneurship, the highest rate in the developed world, ahead of Australia and the US.

8% of the adult population in Canada is involved in an established business (one more than 42 months old), a lower rate than in Australia or the US.

In terms of intrapreneurship (entrepreneurship in large organizations) Canada’s rate is 6.5%, that ranks us 12th among developed countries.

A significant number of startups have major growth plans. Twenty percent expect to create 20 or more jobs within five years.

In common with most other developed countries, the largest sector for entrepreneurship (48%) is consumer services, closely followed by business services.

A significant minority of startups export. 20% of them project from 25% to 75% of revenue from export, and 13% anticipate more than 75% of revenue from export.

A significant minority of startups offer innovative products or services (9%-14% depending upon the questions asked.

17% of startups use technology available only in the least year, an indicator of innovativeness.

The age group with the highest TEA was the 25 – 34 age group, at 22.3%.

In an earlier blog, I asked if we had too much innovation or not enough. The answer was that some areas had too much and some too little. Which raises the question what can be done to increase innovation. In fact, there are quite a number of proven approaches to increasing innovation. Here is a short list:

Competition. This is one of the effective ways of getting innovation as it uses the ingenuity of large numbers of people who want to make a profit. The economist Willian J. Baumol captures this well in the title of one of his books – “The free market Innovation Machine.” Baumol goes on to explain that “the prime weapon of competition is not price but innovation. As a result, firms cannot afford to leave innovation to chance. Rather, managements are forced by market pressures to support innovative activities systematically and substantially… The end result is a ferocious arms race among firms in the most rapidly evolving sectors of the economy.”

Prizes. Cash prizes have a long history of stimulating innovation. One of the earliest examples is the Longitude prize, offered by the British government in 1714 to anyone who could determine longitude accurately. That prize was eventually won by John Harrison, for an accurate clock. The XPrize is a more recent example, which was set up to bring about “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity”. The XPrize has stimulated numerous other prizes, including one in Alberta run by the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC) to find commercially viable applications for waste gas.

Military spending. This is a very wasteful way of generating innovations, but it can produce very significant results. Mariana Mazzucato has shown that many of the technologies in the iPhone were originally developed and used by the US military before being “re-purposed” and incorporated into the iPhone. The internet is another example, which was originally funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in the US.

Government funded megaprojects. There are a few examples of megaprojects that have developed significant innovations. One is the man on the moon project in the 1960’s. This was a political, not scientific project that occurred at the height of the cold war. NASA considers Landsat satellite imagery to be a direct result of this megaproject. However this is a very wasteful way of getting innovations. Another example might be the Chinese government’s initiative – the Belt and Road project – to spend significant resources to enhance trade across Eurasia.

Because of the magnitude of resources required, this will always be a very minor contribution to overall innovation.

Surprisingly, regulation can sometimes stimulate innovation. A classic example is the role of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which imposed stringent fuel economy standards for all automobiles sold in California, in 1967. This led automakers to develop innovations to significantly improve fuel economy, not only for cars sold in California but everywhere else as well. There have been numerous other similar examples. Carbon taxes and cap and trade systems are intended to stimulate innovation by the same mechanism. Nobody wants to pay taxes and people and companies work to reduce emissions and so pay less tax.

Sometimes innovations just happen without any apparent motivation. The “learning by doing”, “experience curve” or “learning curve” effects are based on a series of often very small changes which cumulatively have a powerful effect. When a routine task is repeated, each cumulative doubling of repetitions typically leads to a reduction of 10-20 % in cost per unit.

New Technology. The classic example of a new technology stimulating innovation in the old technology it aims to replace is the sailing ship. In the 30 years after the introduction of the steam power in the 19th century, sailing technology improved more than it had in the previous 300 years. This is termed the “Sailing Ship effect”, which has been well documented in numerous other cases.

None of these approaches include current hot topics such as research and development spending, venture capital, crowdfunding, tax credits or other popular ideas. This is not at all to say that these approached don’t work, but just to remind us that there are many paths to innovation.